Which Octopus Energy tariff is right for you? (2026 guide)

Affiliate disclosure: this post contains an Octopus Energy referral link. If you use it, both of us get £50 bill credit — the same £50 any Octopus referral earns, just attributed to me. It doesn't change the price you pay or the tariff you can pick.

Editorial note: I've been an Octopus Energy customer since September 2019, but only on the Flexible and Fixed tariffs. I have a smart meter; I haven't personally used Tracker, Agile, Go, Intelligent Go, Cosy, Outgoing or Flux. Where this post talks about my own usage, that's first-hand. Where it talks about Octopus's smart tariff range, that's an analyst-style summary of Octopus's published rates and customer data — read it as such.

Octopus's tariff list looks intimidating until you realise that almost all of it is built around two questions:

1. Do you have a smart meter?
2. Do you have an EV, a heat pump, solar, or none of the above?

Answer those two and the choice usually narrows to one or two tariffs. This guide walks through every Octopus tariff you can sign up for in May 2026, who each is best for, what the rates currently look like, and where the trade-offs sit.

I'll be upfront about something the brochure doesn't say: a smart meter alone is not a reason to leave Fixed. I have a working smart meter. I'm on Fixed. The honest reason — covered later in this post — is that smart-tariff savings for households without an EV, a heat pump, or solar are genuinely modest, and not always worth the variability.

The 30-second decision tree

Skip ahead if your situation matches one of these:

• EV with home charger → Intelligent Octopus Go (or standard Octopus Go if your EV/charger isn't on the supported list). Off-peak rates dropped up to 39% in April 2026; some regions are now under 4p/kWh overnight.
• Heat pump or electric-only heating → Cosy Octopus. Eight off-peak hours a day at around 14.5p/kWh (April–June 2026 cap rate).
• Solar panels (no battery) → Stay on whichever import tariff makes sense for your usage and add Outgoing Octopus for export. Note: export prices changed on 1 March 2026.
• Solar + battery → Agile Octopus, paired with Agile export. Flux and Intelligent Flux were both paused to new customers in early 2026; Agile is now the practical replacement until they reopen.
• No EV, no heat pump, no solar → Octopus Tracker if you can stomach daily price volatility; Octopus Fixed if you'd rather lock in for 12 months. The rest of this post unpacks that choice.
• No smart meter (and don't want one) → Flexible Octopus, capped at the Ofgem price cap.

The full lineup, with current numbers, is below.

The Octopus tariff lineup in May 2026

Flexible Octopus

The default tariff. Standard variable, capped at the Ofgem price cap. From 1 April to 30 June 2026 the cap sets the typical dual-fuel direct-debit household at £1,641 per year, with electricity unit rates around 25p/kWh and a standing charge of 57.2p/day. Flexible Octopus tracks that cap. It's what you land on if you don't actively choose another tariff, and what most Octopus customers are on.

Best for: households without a smart meter, or anyone who prefers no admin and the safety of cap-tracking pricing.

Octopus Fixed

A 12-month fixed-rate tariff. Unit rates and standing charges are locked for the term. Octopus's Fixed tends to sit a few percent above or below the price cap depending on where wholesale prices are at the moment of sign-up — when the cap is forecast to rise (as it is for July 2026, with industry forecasters Cornwall Insight, EDF and E.ON modelling roughly £1,937–1,972), Fixed often comes in below the next cap and saves money.

There's typically an exit fee if you leave early — historically around £75 per fuel — so check your tariff details in-app before signing up.

Best for: anyone who wants budget certainty and is willing to swap a small amount of upside for protection from cap rises. This is what I'm on. More on why below.

Octopus Tracker

A daily wholesale-tracking tariff. Each afternoon — typically after 4pm — Octopus publishes the next day's unit rate based on the day-ahead wholesale auction, plus a fixed markup for network costs, policy costs and Octopus's margin. Rates vary by region.

Across 2026 to date, Tracker has averaged around 20.7p/kWh of unit-rate cost — comfortably below the typical price-cap rate of around 26p/kWh. But it's volatile: cold snaps and gas-supply shocks push the daily rate up sharply, and Octopus caps it at 100p/kWh for electricity and 30p/kWh for gas — far above the price cap. (You won't hit those numbers in practice; they exist as a safety stop.)

Best for: households on a flat usage shape who can't shift load to off-peak hours but are happy to ride the daily wholesale curve. You need a smart meter and a reasonably steady budget tolerance.

Agile Octopus

A half-hourly tariff. The unit rate changes every 30 minutes, following the wholesale market in real time. Standing charges still apply, and a peak-time uplift (typically 4–7pm) makes those slots more expensive than the average.

The 2026 average Agile import rate has been around 20.7p/kWh, dropping a further 3.5p/kWh on 1 April 2026 when the government removed certain levies from electricity bills. The cheapest rolling three-and-a-half-hour block has averaged 13.66p/kWh — about half the price cap rate. Smart-load shifting (dishwasher, EV charging, washing machine, hot-water cylinder) is where Agile pays.

Best for: households with shiftable load — EV owners, anyone with a smart-charger, hot-water tanks, smart appliances, or solar-and-battery setups. Without something to time-shift, Agile underperforms Tracker for similar effort.

Octopus Go

A two-rate EV tariff. Cheap overnight off-peak window of 00:30–05:30 every night (five hours), then a peak rate for the remaining 19 hours. From 1 April 2026 Octopus dropped Go off-peak rates by up to 39% across regions; some are now under 4p/kWh, others sit in the 5.49–6.99p/kWh range.

Best for: EV households where the car can charge automatically between 00:30 and 05:30 every night. If your charger or vehicle isn't on Intelligent Octopus Go's supported list, standard Go is the fallback — and the off-peak rate is now genuinely competitive after the April reset.

Intelligent Octopus Go

The premium EV tariff. Six hours of off-peak whole-home electricity overnight, between 23:30 and 05:30, at around 7.5p/kWh. Daytime rates average around 32p/kWh. The "intelligent" part is that Octopus controls the charging schedule for compatible EVs and chargers, smart-shifting your charge to the cheapest grid moments inside that window.

A change worth flagging: from 2026, Intelligent Octopus Go applies a 6-hour daily off-peak cap. About 80% of Intelligent Go charging sessions already used under six hours, but if you've been routinely scheduling longer charges, anything beyond the cap now bills at the daytime rate.

Best for: EV owners with a supported charger or vehicle who want the full whole-home overnight cheap window without configuring it themselves. Genuinely the strongest EV tariff on the UK market in 2026.

Cosy Octopus

A three-rate tariff for households heating with electricity. Eight off-peak hours a day across three windows (4–7am, 1–4pm, 10pm–12am), a peak rate from 4–7pm, and a standard daytime rate the rest of the time. On the April–June 2026 cap, the rates are roughly:

• Off-peak: 14.53p/kWh
• Standard day: 33.28p/kWh
• Peak (4–7pm): 51.68p/kWh

The structure is designed to nudge heat-pump owners to pre-heat the house cheaply during off-peak hours and run the pump less during the 4–7pm peak. You need a heat pump, electric radiator, or electric boiler to qualify (it doesn't have to be Octopus-installed). Octopus's published estimate is a small annual saving — around £35 — versus the price cap for a typical 6,600 kWh-per-year heat-pump household. That figure suggests Cosy is more about smoothing peak grid stress than dramatic bill savings; the real win is for households whose heat pump can pre-heat a well-insulated home and ride out the 4–7pm peak.

Best for: households with a heat pump and decent insulation who can shift heating load away from 4–7pm.

Outgoing Octopus

The standard solar export tariff. Pays a flat per-kWh rate for electricity exported to the grid. Rates were updated on 1 March 2026. You can pair Outgoing with whichever import tariff suits your usage best.

Best for: solar households without a battery who want a simple flat export rate.

A note on Flux and Intelligent Flux

If you've come across Octopus Flux or Intelligent Octopus Flux in older guides, both tariffs were paused to new customers in early 2026 amid wholesale-market volatility. Existing customers may still be on them, but they aren't options for new sign-ups as of May 2026. Solar-and-battery households looking for a similar mechanism should look at Agile (paired with Agile export) instead until Octopus reopens the export-tariff range.

Why I'm on Fixed despite having a smart meter

This is the honest section.

I've been an Octopus customer since September 2019. I have a working smart meter sending half-hourly readings. I'm on Octopus Fixed. The reasons aren't sophisticated:

1. My usage shape is flat. No EV, no heat pump, no solar. I cook in the evenings, I work from home some days, and I run the dishwasher whenever it's full. There's nothing meaningful to time-shift to a cheap overnight window or a 1pm Cosy slot. Smart-tariff savings come almost entirely from load-shifting; without something to shift, the savings shrink to near nothing.
2. I value budget certainty over moderate upside. Tracker's 2026 average has beaten the cap by roughly 5p/kWh, which on my consumption is around £80–£120 a year. That's worth having if you're risk-tolerant. I'd rather know what the bill is.
3. The price cap is forecast to rise in July 2026. Cornwall Insight, EDF and E.ON are all forecasting a Q3 cap of around £1,937–1,972 — up roughly £300 from the April figure of £1,641. Fixed tariffs sourced at April 2026 prices were locking in below that forecast. That's the moment Fixed earns its keep.
4. The 2021–22 lock decided this for me. I locked into Fixed in September 2021, weeks before wholesale prices exploded. It saved me several hundred pounds across the next 12 months. That's the moment I learned that "boring" can be the right energy decision.

If any of those four points don't describe you — particularly if you have an EV, a heat pump, or solar — your decision is different.

Tracker: should I switch to it?

The most-asked-about smart tariff, and the one whose answer changes most with your household.

The case for Tracker:

• 2026 average around 20.7p/kWh vs price-cap unit rate around 26p/kWh — roughly 20% lower on the unit rate alone.
• No load-shifting needed. The savings come from being on the wholesale curve instead of the cap, not from running appliances at 3am.
• Daily price visibility. You see tomorrow's rate at around 4pm today, so you can plan if you want to.

The case against Tracker:

• Daily volatility. A cold snap with a gas-supply scare can push the rate up sharply for several days running. The historical worst case in winter 2022 saw it spike well above the cap.
• The savings are real but not life-changing for an average household — roughly £80–£200/year on typical usage, depending on regional rates and weather.
• It costs you mental energy. If you're someone who gets stressed by checking unit rates every day, that's a real ongoing tax.

Where I'd lean: if you have a smart meter, a flexible budget, no anxiety about bill variability, and you want to come in below the cap most months — try Tracker for three months. You can switch back to Fixed or Flexible without penalty. If you'd find daily price-watching tedious, stay on Fixed.

EV charging: Octopus Go vs Intelligent Octopus Go

Both are genuinely competitive after the April 2026 rate cuts. The choice is really about your charger and vehicle.

Pick Intelligent Octopus Go if:

• Your car and home charger are on Octopus's supported list.
• You want six hours of whole-home off-peak power overnight, not just car-charging hours.
• You're happy to let Octopus's smart system schedule your charging inside the off-peak window.

Pick standard Octopus Go if:

• Your EV or charger isn't supported by Intelligent Go.
• You only need cheap car-charging hours, not whole-home off-peak.
• You're comfortable scheduling charging manually for the 00:30–05:30 window.

The 6-hour daily off-peak cap on Intelligent Go from 2026 affects a small minority of users (Octopus says around 20% of sessions go over), but it's worth knowing about if you've got a large battery (e.g. 100 kWh+) you sometimes top up from very low.

For full transparency: I don't drive an EV. The above is summarised from Octopus's published rates and the 2026 EV-tariff coverage at Energy Stats UK and Sunsave; if you've actually used either tariff for a year, your real-world view will be more useful than mine.

Switching tariff once you're an Octopus customer

This is the part Octopus does well. Tariff changes happen in the app or web account in a few clicks, and most go live the same day or within 24 hours. There's no penalty for switching between Octopus's variable tariffs (Flexible, Tracker, Agile, Go, Intelligent Go, Cosy) at any time.

A few practical notes:

• Smart-meter prerequisite. Tracker, Agile, Go, Intelligent Go and Cosy all need a smart meter sending half-hourly readings. If yours is sending daily, switch the reporting frequency in your Octopus account first. If you don't have one, Octopus installs them free.
• Fixed exit fees. Leaving Fixed early typically costs around £75 per fuel — confirm your specific contract in-app before switching off Fixed. Unit-rate movement can sometimes still make it worth paying the exit, but do the maths.
• Mid-tenancy switches. If you've moved house and your meter readings haven't fully landed, give it a fortnight before switching tariff so the back-billing is clean.
• Octoplus rewards. Saving Sessions, free-electricity hours and the daily Octopoints spin apply on most tariffs — double-check the rewards carry over to whichever tariff you switch into.

My verdict for May 2026

For most Octopus customers, the answer is one of three things:

1. EV at home → Intelligent Octopus Go. Strongest single-tariff value in the UK domestic market right now, with the April 2026 off-peak cuts.
2. Heat pump → Cosy Octopus. Modest direct savings, but the structure pays back if you can pre-heat in the off-peak windows and ride out the 4–7pm peak.
3. Everyone else → Tracker if you're happy to ride wholesale; Fixed if you want certainty. Both currently beat the cap on average — Tracker by more, Fixed by less but with no daily variability.

Solar-and-battery is the awkward case in 2026 — Flux and Intelligent Flux being paused to new customers means Agile (paired with Agile export) is the practical replacement until Octopus reopens the export-tariff range.

If this guide has been useful and you're not yet an Octopus customer, you can use my Octopus £50 referral link — both of us get £50 bill credit, paid after your first direct debit. The full referral scheme is explained on the Octopus Energy referral page.

You might also like

• Octopus Energy review: 6 years as a customer
• Octopus Energy vs E.ON Next referral: which gives you more?
• EV charger installation: guide to home EV charging in the UK

Sources

• Ofgem energy price cap (1 April – 30 June 2026): https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/information-consumers/energy-advice-households/energy-price-cap-explained
• Octopus Tracker daily rates and methodology: https://octopus.energy/smart/tracker/
• Octopus Agile half-hourly pricing: https://octopus.energy/smart/agile/
• Octopus Go: https://octopus.energy/smart/go/
• Intelligent Octopus Go: https://octopus.energy/smart/intelligent-octopus-go/
• Cosy Octopus: https://octopus.energy/smart/cosy-octopus/
• Q3 2026 Ofgem price cap forecasts (Cornwall Insight / EDF / E.ON), reported across UK energy press in April–May 2026.
• Octopus Energy 8 million UK customers (April 2026): https://octopus.energy/press/

Rates current as of 1 May 2026; the Q3 2026 Ofgem price cap is published by 27 May 2026 and may shift the comparison.